Post-Yugoslav Metamuseums

Post-Yugoslav Metamuseums
Author: Nataša Jagdhuhn
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2022-09-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3031102282

This book analyzes how Second World War heritage is being reframed in the memorial museums of the post-socialist, post-conflict states of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. It argues that in all three countries, a reluctance to confront undesirable parts of their national histories is the root cause explaining why the state-funded Second World War memorial museums remain stuck in the postsocialist transition. In most cases, Second World War museums, exhibitions, and displays conceived in the Yugoslav period have been left unchanged. However, there are also examples where new sections were added to the old ones and there are a small number of completely reconceptualized permanent exhibitions. The transitional position of the Second World War museums has made it possible to view these institutions as historical formations in their own right. The book will appeal to students and academics working in the fields of heritage and museums studies, memory studies, and cultural history of Southeast-Europe.

Art Work

Art Work
Author: Katja Praznik
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2021-06-29
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1487538197

In Art Work, Katja Praznik counters the Western understanding of art – as a passion for self-expression and an activity done out of love, without any concern for its financial aspects – and instead builds a case for understanding art as a form of invisible labour. Focusing on the experiences of art workers and the history of labour regulation in the arts in socialist Yugoslavia, Praznik helps elucidate the contradiction at the heart of artistic production and the origins of the mystification of art as labour. This profoundly interdisciplinary book highlights the Yugoslav socialist model of culture as the blueprint for uncovering the interconnected aesthetic and economic mechanisms at work in the exploitation of artistic labour. It also shows the historical trajectory of how policies toward art and artistic labour changed by the end of the 1980s. Calling for a fundamental rethinking of the assumptions behind Western art and exploitative labour practices across the world, Art Work will be of interest to scholars in East European studies, art theory, and cultural policy, as well as to practicing artists.

Post-Communist Transitional Justice

Post-Communist Transitional Justice
Author: Lavinia Stan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2015-02-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107065569

Explores how the former communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe have grappled with the serious human rights violations of past regimes.

Thinking about Yugoslavia

Thinking about Yugoslavia
Author: Sabrina P. Ramet
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2005-12-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521851513

A unique survey of the evidence and academic debates surrounding the break-up of Yugoslavia.

Debates on Stalinism

Debates on Stalinism
Author: Mark Edele
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2020-06-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1526148951

Debates on Stalinism introduces major debates about Stalinism during and after the Cold War. Did 'Stalinism' form a system in its own right or was it a mere stage in the overall development of Soviet society? Was it an aberration from Leninism or the logical conclusion of Marxism? Was its violence the revenge of the Russian past or the result of a revolutionary mindset? Was Stalinism the work of a madman or the product of social forces beyond his control? The book shows the complexities of historiographical debates, where evidence, politics, personality, and biography are strongly entangled. Debates on Stalinism allows readers to better understand not only the history of history writing, but also contemporary controversies and conflicts in the successor states of the Soviet Union, in particular Russia and Ukraine.

Avant-garde as Method

Avant-garde as Method
Author: Anna Bokov
Publisher: Park Publishing (WI)
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: Architectural design
ISBN: 9783038601340

"The groundbreaking new study on the early Soviet Union's Higher Art and Technical Studios, known as Vkhutemas, and their pioneering curriculum that has been a source of inspiration for generations of architects, designers, and artists until the present day."--Provided by publisher.

Women and Yugoslav Partisans

Women and Yugoslav Partisans
Author: Jelena Batinić
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2015-05-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107091071

This book focuses on the mass participation of women in the communist-led Yugoslav Partisan resistance during World War II.

Dissident Histories in the Soviet Union

Dissident Histories in the Soviet Union
Author: Barbara Martin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2019-05-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 135010681X

How was it possible to write history in the Soviet Union, under strict state control and without access to archives? What methods of research did these 'historians' - be they academic, that is based at formal institutions, or independent - rely on? And how was their work influenced by their complex and shifting relationships with the state? To answer these questions, Barbara Martin here tracks the careers of four bold and important dissidents: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Roy Medvedev, Aleksandr Nekrich and Anton Antonov-Ovseenko. Based on extensive archival research and interviews (with some of the authors themselves, as well as those close to them), the result is a nuanced and very necessary history of Soviet dissident history writing, from the relative liberalisation of de-Stalinisation through increasing repression and persecution in the Brezhnev era to liberalisation once more during perestroika. In the process Martin sheds light onto late Soviet society and its relationship with the state, as well as the ways in which this dissidence participated in weakening the Soviet regime during Perestroika. This is important reading for all scholars working on late Soviet history and society.

The Futurist Files

The Futurist Files
Author: Iva Glisic
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2018-10-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1609092457

Futurism was Russia's first avant-garde movement. Gatecrashing the Russian public sphere in the early twentieth century, the movement called for the destruction of everything old, so that the past could not hinder the creation of a new, modern society. Over the next two decades, the protagonists of Russian Futurism pursued their goal of modernizing human experience through radical art. The success of this mission has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Critics have often characterized Russian Futurism as an expression of utopian daydreaming by young artists who were unrealistic in their visions of Soviet society and naïve in their comprehension of the Bolshevik political agenda. By tracing the political and ideological evolution of Russian Futurism between 1905 and 1930, Iva Glisic challenges this view, demonstrating that Futurism took a calculated and systematic approach to its contemporary socio-political reality. This approach ultimately allowed Russia's Futurists to devise a unique artistic practice that would later become an integral element of the distinctly Soviet cultural paradigm. Drawing upon a unique combination of archival materials and employing a theoretical framework inspired by the works of philosophers such as Lewis Mumford, Karl Mannheim, Ernst Bloch, Fred Polak, and Slavoj Žižek, The Futurist Files presents Futurists not as blinded idealists, but rather as active and judicious participants in the larger project of building a modern Soviet consciousness. This fascinating study ultimately stands as a reminder that while radical ideas are often dismissed as utopian, and impossible, they did—and can—have a critical role in driving social change. It will be of interest to art historians, cultural historians, and scholars and students of Russian history.